August 3rd, 2024. Hell Diest. It's the evening of the last concert of the Brave Nu World Tour. On the bill are Sin Soto and Piston Fist from Australia, Kaosis from New Zealand and two tribute bands: one does Slipknot, the other The Prodigy.

They had me at Kaosis. It's not every day you have the chance to see a top notch industrial metal band from down under.

Sin Soto’s singer Lex told me she actually likes opening. Warming up the audience. Creating the atmosphere for the follow-up bands to thrive in. She does radiate that in her vibrant barefoot performance which is quite unique and versatile, just like Sin Soto’s music, which is an ecclectic mix of metal, hip hop, rock, with a whif of electronica here and there.

Piston Fist was true to their name bringing powerful – what they call – petrol rock. The songs are all decent and well structured. There’s a bit of Pantera in this band. I'm sure there is a big audience for this kind of in-your-face metal, for sure if they work on a bit more versatlity, at least in the vocals. The message was clear: don’t take any bullshit from anyone.

And then there was Kaosis. Their varied industrial metal set lit up Hell literally – with lasers – and figuratively. Even if their drummer had a sprained ankle and wasn’t able to play the set live, the beats didn’t suffer noticeably. The two guitarists gave their best, including some harmonic intros and blistering leads.

Rapping, singing, shouting... it all went well for frontman XEN who got the audience to participate in some of the moves of the two supporting lasers and, at the end, wings wielding dancers. This is a band that doesn’t only work on their music, but also on their show and total visual experience. A small club like Hell however is not a safe place for a fire worship show so they had to stick to the lasers.

After that, both tributes were performed very well. Yes, the Slipknot one by The Feeders included the masks and should have included the original vocalist of Slipknot. He however didn’t make it on the tour in the end. And the The Prodigy tribute Firestarters also brought out some moves in the audience.

Personally I am not a fan of the tribute band concept. These were manned by musicians of the three non-tribute bands. Adding them to the bill was part of the plan to be able to support a sixteen people caravan on a European tour to give the audience an extra bang for their buck.

In Hell unfortunately this audience was only thrirty people. The caravan was touring in the middle of festival season. Not the best time to draw well sized audiences, alas. The bands however didn’t let that kill their enthousiasm.

Setting up this tour themselves from the other side of the world cannot have been easy. These people deserve respect for that. There is one specific decision that stood out for me. They were travelling with a Roland TD-50KV2 V-Drum electronic drum. That thing sounded massive in Hell. Acoustic drums are usually hard to mix well in smaller clubs, but the sound of this V-drum and the possiblity to choose kits and mix it in at exactly the right level made all of the bands sound very good. I'd say, if Hell ever has an investment budget of 7k euro I would definitely put this on the list of candidates. And no, I'm not sponsored by Roland to say this.

I am so happy I went to Hell that evening. Only 15 euro for this line-up was, well, ridiculous.

Picture : Peter Vangelder (find more pictures on his Facebook page)